Fist bump
by Izumi1909
Summary: Lalli actually knows what Emil's attempts at fist bumps mean. He just has a specific reason to not answer them.


**Note:** This is a quite soft soulmate AU because the idea behind it more "what if soulmates were a thing in the canon universe, and there was no known foolproof indicator other than hand-to-hand contact?" than what has been used in other soulmate stories.

 **Fist bump**

-Tuuri, why did the big man and the messy Swede want to shake my hand?  
-They don't believe in soulmates, so they don't understand doing it only if you want to check if another person is your soulmate.  
The Swede hadn't minded Lalli going straight past him, but the big man had forced him into a handshake. Neither the noisy captain nor the stupid foreign novice who had shown up in a crate had tried to do it at all, which he was grateful for, despite the other aspects of them he couldn't stand. Though he had never liked touching or getting touched by people he didn't know, Lalli was now making really sure he didn't shake hands with anyone, ever. After what had happened in Saimaa, he saw a soulmate whose identity he knew as yet another person he could lose. In addition to this, everyone else on the mission was from another country.

Mikkel left him alone, but Emil kept trying to make hand contact with him, via a means that he had yet to encounter before. Tuuri told him it was called a fist bump. As days turned into weeks, Lalli surprised himself in how little he minded the Swede's company, and started half-considering responding to that fist-bump someday, just to be sure. Then the ghosts caught up with them and Tuuri was bitten by a troll. Then the thing in front of the car-thing caught fire one morning and Tuuri told him they were going to travel to their pick-up spot by foot. He and Emil had to go get camping supplies in a town. As Tuuri was telling him this, Lalli could see the illness was no longer dormant, but that the symptoms were still mild enough that she could ignore them. He wanted to stay, to be here whenever she noticed. But he couldn't say it without telling her that he had been seeing it coming from the beginning, that both he and the foreign novice had been keeping their mouths shut to afford her a few more days of happiness. Besides, this also meant he had to get used to being alone with Emil, as he was soon going to be the only person he liked in the crew.

After they had found their materials, Emil tried to cheer him up by showing him a flower. He seemed to think that being a mage meant being happy when seeing a flower. Then he presented his fist, expecting Lalli to respond. He knew Emil had no more idea than Tuuri that she was already sick, but he had to be really stupid and have had nothing really happen in his life before this to believe things were going to get better. Emil was probably not his soulmate after all. His actual soulmate would be able to understand.  
-I knew we were too different. I never liked your annoying face anyway.  
They headed back to camp after this, both in a sour mood.

Tuuri came to talk to him, asking him questions about the trapped ones, telling him she was asking for Reynir, who had already asked him about them a long time ago in the dreamspace. So she knew, but didn't tell him directly, despite the fact that nobody else would understand if she told him in the only language they shared anyway. Maybe it was still a little early. She said she was going to bed. Mikkel was examining her every morning when she got up, everyone would know then. Maybe she wanted one last night to get used to it. He guessed it was okay. He was going to need that night too. It would have probably been the right thing to do if she had _actually_ gone to bed that evening.

They let him make sur Tuuri wasn't lost, but they didn't leave him alone. A pair of boots that could be only Emil's was sticking out of the car-thing's front door once he was done. As they were on the way to catch up with the others, they attracted a giant's attention. He tried to make himself and Emil move away slowly and silently, it didn't work. Then, Emil turned out to not be able to follow him on the ice. He knew he wasn't powerful enough to kill the giant, and trying would only get himself killed in addition to Emil, while he had a chance of safety if he ran. But he couldn't. He didn't know if it was because he couldn't bear to lose someone else, or if he couldn't bear to lose Emil specifically despite the fact that he was still mad at him. He released all the power he could on the giant. He didn't know he had so much. _Something_ , he didn't know what, happened to him in the dreamspace. He briefly heard Emil's voice calling him, then felt like he was falling for a time that could have been minutes or hours. Eventually, he somehow fell in dreamspace water again. A light led him to what seemed to be someone's dream area. It was a house a lot like the one they had briefly visited in Sweden, but it looked different. It turned out to be Emil's. Lalli had no idea how he had ended up there of all places, but his best guess was that it had something to do with him being the closest to him in the physical world. At least, he had a place to rest. The little he saw before settling on the couch confirmed his suspicion that his life and Emil's had nothing in common. Emil gave him a piece of cake. As he was eating it, Lalli glanced out the window, and saw buildings on fire far away. Emil told him to ignore them, and that he could rest since the dream would end before the fire propagated to his house. A big fire. Maybe _one_ thing in common, then. Right now, he needed to rest. Maybe he could ask Emil the next night.

He hadn't quite thought of the fact that he probably couldn't wake up, and what would happen when Emil did. He seemed to be able to see the world through Emil's eyes, but have no kind of control on his body. Emil spoke to himself, and seemed quite clueless about how to get back to the others. The answer seemed quite obvious to Lalli:  
-Just start walking. Stupid!  
It took him a while to realize that Emil was shaking his head, before looking in his body's direction:  
-Did… did you just say something to me?  
Had he? After a few moments, he tried "talking" again.  
-No?  
-That's it. I've gone insane now too. Insane from worry.  
How was he supposed to explain what was happening to someone who didn't believe in magic? If seeing Kokko hadn't convinced him, he doubted whatever he had done to the giant had. Emil probably had no idea why his body was unconscious, and was unable to make the connection with his dream if he remembered it at all. Lalli himself wasn't sure how this was happening, and wasn't sure he would have been able to explain it to the foreign novice if it had been him instead of Emil. He was going to let Emil go with his own conclusion about the situation for now.  
-If that's what you want to tell yourself.  
Emil left the house, pulling his body behind him on very precarious-looking device. He'd try convincing Emil to make something better out of it if they ran into long enough tree branches.  
-And be careful with my body! I don't want to wake up with a concussion.  
Lalli thought of the fire. If they both got out alive, he was _really_ going to need to make sure his soulmate wasn't Emil.


End file.
